Ann Moura (born August 20[1] 1947[2]) is an author of books about magic, religion and Neo-Paganism.[3] She calls her witchcraft tradition Green Witchcraft,[4] and has written several books about it.[3] Her public Craft name is Aoumiel.[5]Ann Moura has been a solitary practitioner of Green Witchcraft for over forty-five years. According to Moura, her mother and grandmother practiced witchcraft, which makes her ahereditary witch.[3] Her mother and grandmother were Brazilians of Spanish descent, and Ann Moura considers their tradition Celtic-Iberian.[4] Unlike them, Moura doesn't include names of Christiansaints to her witchcraft practice. Instead, she uses names of Pagandeities because she believes that the family's witchcraft tradition was originally Pagan.[3]The death of Moura's mother prompted her to write about Green Witchcraft. She wanted to pass along the things she had learned from her mother and grandmother. Her mother and grandmother passed down information as matters came up rather than as a complete, formal education. Moura was worried that the knowledge moving from one generation to the next was getting slimmer.[3][6] Green Witchcraft as presented by Moura also contains information discovered by Moura herself.[6]Moura holds both Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in history.[2][7] She is a certified Archivist, and has been a NavyLieutenant and a high school history teacher.[2] She runs her own metaphysical store.[7] She is married, and has two children. She lives in Florida.[2]

February 12 - Gerald Gardner, founder of the Gardnerian tradition, born June 13, 1884 dies of heart failure, 1964.The occult tradition of Crowley merged with the spurious fertility-cult anthropology of the followers of Margaret Murray during the 1940's and 1950's to produce a new phenomenon. Around the time that the famous litterateur Robert Graves was writing his imaginative and wholly unreliable White Goddess (1948) about an alleged worldwide cult of the earth and moon goddess, modern witchcraft was being created in the mind of an Englishman named Gerald Gardner. According to his followers, Gardner, who was born in 1884, was initiated into the ancient religion in 1939 by a witch of the New Forest named Old Dorthy Clutterbuck. In fact, Gardner had invented the religion on the basis of his readings of the Murrayites and Aleister Crowley, and his experiences in occult organizations such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Crowley's Order of the Temple of the Orient. Gardner claim to be the mediator of an ancient religion was spurious, but he launched a growing religious movement that has gained many adherents, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries. Whatever its origins, it has become a small religious movement in its own right.Gardner's works were very influential in British occult circles, and many contemporary witches, sometimes called Gardnerites, received their credentials through Gardner's Witchcraft Museum on the Isle of Man. The question of legitimacy among British witches is still raging, each accusing the other of concocting his own rituals.Gardner's reputation suffered somewhat after his death when it emerged that he probably fabricated his academic qualifications. In addition, some people claimed that, contrary to his own declarations, he had invented rather than rediscovered the mystic and ancient religion that came to be called Wicca.http://GeraldGardner.comThe overall world numbers of the witches must be fewer than a hundred thousand. There are a numerous schismatic ( tending to, or of the nature of) groups. The tenets of witchcraft as it has evolved include a reverence for nature expressed in the worship of a fertility goddess and (sometimes) a god; a restrained hedonism (ethics, the doctrine that pleasure in the highest good) that advocates indulgence in sexual pleasures so long as advocates indulgence hurts no one; the practice of group magic aimed (usually) at healing or other positive ends; colorful rituals; and release from guilt and sexual inhibitions. It rejects diabolism and even the belief in the devil on the grounds that the existence of the Devil is a Christian, not a pagan, doctrine. It offers a sense of the feminine principle in the godhead, a principle almost entirely forgotten in the masculine symbolism of the great monotheistic religions. And its eclectic paganism promotes a sense of the variety and diversity of the godhead.http://thewica.co.uk/Gerald%20Gardner.htmMagic, Witchcraft, and Religion An Anthropological Study of the Supernatural Third EditionPublisher MayfieldCassell Dictionary of Witchcraft David Pickering

Wiccans and Pagans have an animal companion that they consider their familiar. A familiar is part of the family. A familiar is often defined as an animal with whom we have a magical connection. If an animal has appeared in your life unexpectedly -- such as a stray cat that appears regularly, for instance -- it's possible that the animal may have been drawn to you magickally!